


Our Sweetest Songs

by misqueue



Series: Vignettes of Season Six [3]
Category: Glee
Genre: Canon Compliant, Family, Ficlet, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Maternal love, Season/Series 06, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 18:07:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3539018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misqueue/pseuds/misqueue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Carole-centric companion piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/3432116">While My Heart's Still Beating</a>. Set over episodes 6x07 "Transitioning" and 6x08 "A Wedding". Vignettes of grief, love, and family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Sweetest Songs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jakia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jakia/gifts).



> For luckyjak's prompt: Burt and/or Carole POV of “The Wedding”
> 
> Title from Shelley's "Ode to a Skylark": _"Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought"_

**1.**

It's nice having an egg back in her nest—rather a fully-fledged young bird. Carole knows Kurt's only resting his wings. She's sad for his reasons, but having him home is both joy and salve.

The comfort of his presence when Burt's in DC fills the house with tangible warmth: faint sounds of Broadway in the upstairs hall, the hiss of the espresso machine at six AM, coming home to dinner and a glass of wine—and then heckling Burt's political opponents on the evening news until they're both in hysterics. It leaves less room for the restless ghosts of memory.

**2.**

Thursday Carole comes home for a late lunch, opens the front door to a sound she hasn't heard in nearly two years: the happy murmurs of two boys' voices winding down the stairwell into the foyer. Neither is the voice embedded in her bones, but she knows Blaine's laugh as well as she knows Kurt's. She closes the door with enough force they'll hear it.

Just this past Friday, Kurt was staring miserably into his morning coffee.

"Penny for your thoughts?" She sat down and pushed a blueberry streusel muffin across the table.

"Blaine kissed me last night," Kurt said. "And then he looked... so unhappy, he walked away without saying anything. He's still with Karofsky. Maybe the duet was a mistake and I shouldn't have—" He breaks off, shudders. "I'm afraid it was a goodbye kiss."

Comforting Kurt is often not about reassurance but instead challenging his thinking. He's different from Finn. "Sometimes, people walk away because they need to know whether you'll follow."

Kurt blinked at her, disoriented as if she'd turned on a light in a dark room. "How am I supposed to know that?"

"You'll figure it out," she said. Today, it sounds like he did.

**3.**

"You're Kurt's mom, right?" Whitney Pierce asks her. It's after the ceremony, and Carole's on her second celebratory glass of bubbles, which is maybe why her heart pangs so sharply in her chest that her vision blurs.

"Oh," she says. Usually she would correct the assumption out of respect for Burt's first wife. But Kurt and Finn only ever called each other brother. So, in a wash of tipsy emotion, she honors his memory and her own feelings, "Yes, I am."

(The girls planned a number featuring their mothers; there's a spare dress her size. Whitney tells her the song, and Carole agrees. She watched a son be married today, and that's something to be excited about.)

It's been such a long time since she's seen Kurt's happiness look so effortless. Tonight, she feels the same way about her own.

Still, some melancholy creeps in when she sees Rachel with Sam, but it's not accompanied by the heaviness of grief today. She holds Burt's hand and leans into his warmth, draws his attention to Rachel and Sam's shared nervous smiles. They both know well what it's like to find love again when you stopped believing it was possible for your heart to heal enough to hold it. When Rachel catches her eye, all she can do is smile her encouragement and approval. And after living under her roof for a year, Sam's been one of her eggs too, in his own way. Just like Rachel. She's happy for them both.

It's not until later, as the night deepens, that Blaine leads her onto the dance floor and guides her through a waltz. They both laugh when she steps on his toes. Her heart overflows when she realizes: it's not only that Kurt's gained a husband today; she's gained another son.


End file.
